Alleged Hacker Lauri Love Arrested in UK: US Demands Extradition

Cryptosphere contributor, Occupy stalwart, and dedicated Adrian Lamo heckler Lauri Lovehas been arrested in the UK, and after two years of sparring, a request for extradition has been filed by the US. He faces no charges in the United Kingdom: instead, the hacking charges are American, and the UK government here is putting its police force at the service of foreign powers. This bodes ill for a potential, and inevitable, extradition hearing, although UK PM David Cameron has shown some resistance to US extradition requests, as in the case of Gary Mckinnon.

Love has been fighting a variety of American charges since 2013, including allegations of having used SQL Injection to hack 5,000 NASA employees, the EPA, the Missile Defense Agency, the Federal Reserve, and the US Army, stealing credentials, logins, and credit card numbers, then leaking them to the public. They do not allege he used them for personal gain.

One indictment puts it this way:

Lauri Love, aka nsh aka peace aka shift aka route aka Smedley Butler was a sophisticated and prolific computer hacker. Love worked with other computer hackers around the world to secretly infiltrate the computer networks of private companies and government entities in order to steal and then publicly disseminate confidential information found on those networks.

He has previously boasted considerable success in court, having forced the UK courts to return much of his seized computer equipment, regardless of the fact they had been unable to decrypt the devices. Past victories notwithstanding, the quixotic animal hat enthusiast will need every rabbits’ foot in his millinery arsenal to avoid extradition and trial in the anti-hacktivist United States.